The Three Sins

My dad believes that reading is not of much use in itself and needs to be complemented with writing.

‘Tell me Supreeth’, he says every time I mention that I’ve read a new book, ‘You read so much... Why don’t you write anything?’

‘I need some strong source of motivation’, I reply.

Saying that you’re not motivated is just another way of saying you’re lazy. But this way, much less prone to receiving a half an hour lecture in return. Laziness is one of the many words father cannot tolerate, along with Corruption and Non-veg.

It takes a lot of effort, physical and mental, to sit down and make up your mind to write something. It is in these times that all the vocabulary which you have accumulated over the ages just runs out, vanishing in thin air. Persisting to complete the task then can be trying, especially so if your cell phone does not have an internet pack and your thesaurus is 500 miles away.  I’m just not that talented. Why don’t you understand?

I was in third standard when I first wrote my poem. It was titled ‘O’ Examination!’ It went something like this:

“ O’ Examination!

You give me so much tension

Which causes my depression

Please understand my situation

O’ Examination

You’re punctual

I’m late

And I’m daily losing my weight...” 

It had a striking resemblance to a poem under the same title in one of my brother’s high school magazines, but since it had been tucked away safely in a rusting iron container in the attic, the chances of it being found out was very less. My other works from the period also derived their inspiration, more or less, from the same source. If Rumi Jaffery could walk out saying ‘God Tussi Great Ho’ was ‘inspired’ from ‘Bruce Almighty’, why couldn’t I?

‘You can’t prove it’ I’d say smugly like one of those cocky criminals in the police procedurals on TV. It didn’t go as planned when dad found out.

It had appeared in the kids’ supplement of our newspaper. Kids those days seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of rhyming words. ‘Nature’, the poem was modestly titled:

‘Think about the nature

How will be our future

Without food, air and water?...’ 

‘I have seen it somewhere else before’, he said, looking at me suspiciously as I showed it to him. How was I supposed to know he read the kids’ supplement?

‘Where? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

So police procedural...

What followed was an hour of remorseless droning on how copying is akin to stealing and how stealing is bad (and ergo, copying is too) and how lying is even worse. The three sins; and I had committed all of them.

I had clearly not learnt my lesson when a week later, he called me at home. I was watching TV (which I had been told specifically not to) when the phone rang. I muted the TV.

‘Yen madtaidiya? What’re you upto?’ he asked me, in his trademark interrogative tone

‘Reading Childrens’ Knowledge Bank’ –sigh-

‘Volume 2’, I add, to ward off any suspicion.

‘Which question?’

That is unusual, I think

‘Why do children resemble their parents?’, I blurt out the first question which came to my mind.

‘Which page number?’ he asks, unsatisfied.

Jerry meanwhile had hit Tom with a frying pan, pressed an iron box into his rear, slammed a door in his face, each time Tom’s face contorting into the shape of the object he had been hit with and an awful idiotic grin, and a tooth falling every now and then. It was hilarious.

‘Which page number? What?’ I say, bringing myself back to the conversation. ‘Why is that necessary?’ I say, suppressing my excitement at jerry letting spike loose.

‘Come to the window,' he says.  'slide the curtains.'

It was then that my heart skipped a beat. I knew.

I look through the glass and there he is, standing not a foot away, with the most intense look on his face. Now, I’ve come to associate it with Daniel Craig’s default expression and have got used to it but back then, it was the dreaded ‘Oh you’re in deep trouble kiddo’ face.

‘I was testing you’, he says as he walks in while I hold the door open, my head hung low with shame. I knew what was going to happen. He’d sit on the couch and motion me to come and sit beside him, put a hand on my shoulder and start. It’d go on for an hour. This time however, I was wrong. It was an hour and a half.

‘I’m disappointed in you’ he said, shaking his head and took his position the couch, his hand stretched on the backrest.

So am I dad. I can’t believe you were spying on me.

My head hung low for the rest of the day, even when mom came home. My neck pained a bit but I didn’t complain, thinking it was the price I had to pay for lying.

The next morning being a Sunday, dad took me to a DVD rental and handed me a set of two CDs, with a black and white cover reading ‘Satya Harishchandra’, in Kannada.

‘It’s for my son’, dad said to the owner, keeping his hand on my shoulder.

Why? I thought. Why do you have to do this to me?

The owner smiled. He would be sneering at me on the inside – ‘The kid who lied to his father’

I got to know on the way home that this was the movie which had inspired Mahatma Gandhi to take up truth as his life’s motto.

I loved the movie. So inspired I was by it that I too swore to never tell a lie as long as I live. I did follow it, at least for a week or so. 5 years later, I played Gandhi in my school play. That was about as Gandhian I could get.